


Carrickfergus

by xahra99



Series: Monster Ballads [1]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, Birmingham City, British Politics, British Slang, Complete, F/M, Gen, Mostly Gen, Period Typical Attitudes, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-10-01 21:56:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20417930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xahra99/pseuds/xahra99
Summary: Dear God, he hates this city.Why Inspector Campbell can't stand Birmingham. Series one. Mostly gen. Complete.





	Carrickfergus

_Birmingham, 1919_

Dear God, he hates this city.

Campbell walks the cobbles beneath a grim fish-belly sky and averts his gaze from the street. The wizened old ladies and sunken-eyed children, painted whores and sullen smoking men pass unseen as Campbell lifts his eyes to what, in any other place, would be the hills. In Birmingham, smokestacks belch steam into the clouds. Railways bridge the sky. The city’s pollution falls back down into the city and mingles with the rain falling on Campbell’s bowler hat.

Campbell wipes his face and his fingers come away grimy. He stumbles on a missing cobblestone and curses as splashed water soaks his trouser leg. He lowers his gaze to the ground and studies the pavement instead. Ribboned heels, hobnailed boots streaked with mud and a few bare toes slouch by. Horseshit soaks like tea into a puddle. A dead pigeon floats in the water, wings spread like a fallen angel.

The cobblestones subside to mud. Campbell walks past rows of narrow houses, their windows boarded up like blinded eyes. A gaggle of small children race by, squabbling like sparrows as they call for coins. Campbell tosses a few pennies in the mud and walks on. Behind him he hears childish voices raised in curses, followed by the hard ring of a slap and a child’s high cry.

He wonders how the children survive. Perhaps living in this smoke makes their lungs stronger than babes who breathe fresh country air. Perhaps they suck corruption with their mother’s milk. Perhaps they die. Perhaps their mothers just breed more.

Campbell’s chest tightens. He removes his pipe, fumbles in his pocket for his handkerchief and coughs black sputum into the starched Irish linen. He glares at the grey streets, the grey sky, and the grey rain as he tucks the handkerchief away. It’s always grey in Birmingham, except on sunny days. On sunny days, Birmingham is brown.

This city has stained him as Ireland never could. He’s spent years hunting the worst men in Belfast; devils from the blackest pits of hell, feared and hated equally by their fellows. Campbell is proud of his time there. He purged all Belfast’s demons and in return the city’s denizens respected his strong hand.

But not in Birmingham. Here the gangs rule, and people love them for it. They turn their gangsters into folk heroes and speak proudly of all their small mercies. They’re proud of them. Even the police-_his_ men, who should know better.

Campbell knows who to blame for _that_.

He grips his pipe between his teeth and enters Chinatown. Dirty water drips from the laundry flapping lacklusterly above his head. The air smells of bleach and troubling exotic scents. At least the air smells clean.

He ducks into Mr. Zhang’s shop to wait for Shelby. The Peaky Blinder materializes from the steam like a theatrical demon. He’s more relaxed than Campbell’s seen him, which is quite understandable given the circumstances, and despite his obvious disparity in an enclave that is eighty per cent Chinese, he seems quite at home.

Campbell looks him up and down. He’s dressed smartly, as always, in a well-cut suit with Chinese stitching. His gold watch and well-shined shoes have too much flash and glimmer for the hour, and metal glints at the brim of his flat cap. Smoke from his habitual cigarette mixes with the steam. Shelby’s not a big man, but they say he’s never lost a battle or a war. He certainly has the confident air of a man who thinks he cannot lose.

Campbell aims to fix that.

He smiles around his pipe as Tommy Shelby tells him of the IRA. Shelby thinks he’s smart, but he’s a child playing with toy guns compared to the Fenians. Campbell aims to set them on each other like dogs fighting in a pit. If Shelby really does deliver Byrne, so much the worse.

Campbell bids Shelby goodbye in the steam and walks out into the dirty street. It’s stopped raining and for a moment the carved Chinese pillars and scarlet-threaded tassels lend Birmingham a festive air. Campbell smiles. He has everything in hand. Perhaps things are looking up. 

Then a pigeon shits on his sleeve.

***

It’s raining again the next morning. Malachi Byrne and his compatriot are dead, Tommy Shelby has graduated from thorn in his side to fully fledged adversary, and all Campbell can think of is Grace.

Campbell wants to confront her immediately. Instead he bides his time. At midday he goes out to a chop house for a bite to eat. A carriage rumbles past and soaks him to the skin despite his thick coat. The wool is still damp when he meets her in the park.

It’s stopped raining by then, but the sky is still the shade of grimy laundry. There’s a cold bite in the air. Grace shivers in her blue dress. She stands out like a coin in the gutter. Campbell knows he should have picked a plainer operative. Still, there are compensations.

He mentions Sergeant Moss’s report of the night’s incident and expects her to deny it. She doesn’t. Campbell hopes to God she was acting, that she hasn’t some misplaced regard. She tells him that she’s found the guns, which delights him, and asks for his word that he won’t harm Thomas Shelby, which does not. Despite this, he agrees. He takes her slim hand in his and promises to spare the murdering bastard. She tells him everything she knows.

They unearth the guns at dawn the next day, just as the sky is brightening. The morning’s mild enough that his men work stripped down to their shirtsleeves. Campbell is in an avuncular, almost jovial mood, though he does not unbend far enough to shed his own coat. He is full to the brim with possibilities. He can leave Birmingham. Grace can leave his command. They can both go together. Perhaps they’ll go to Ireland, with its quiet hills and emerald-green grass the colour of Grace’s jumper when she meets him in the graveyard, Erin personified.

Campbell tells her that he’s a good man. She will come to know him with time. Then he proposes. She turns him down flat, and Campbell knows who to blame for that. He swallows his disappointment and promises-to his men, to Churchill and to himself, that he will bring Thomas Shelby down. Shelby, his city, and all his filthy crew. But Shelby first.

His plan doesn’t go quite as he expects.

Campbell has begun to think of Shelby as the _genius loci_ of the city, the avatar of its filthy, grasping pride. As they descend on Small Health, armed to the teeth with clubs and pistols, he imagines ploughing the streets and sowing them with salt. It’s a pity that such biblical retribution is impractical in these modern times, but a man must take what he can lay his hands on.

“I’m looking for Thomas Shelby,” he tells Shelby’s own pub, but the patrons deny all knowledge of his presence. Their loyalty would be admirable in any other place. Here, Campbell sees in Shelby’s henchmen all their stinking city’s sins.

But Shelby’s gone with Grace already, and Campbell calls the whole thing off.

He phones Churchill in the morning. He’s completed the business he came to attend to, but he’s still not finished with the city. When he puts down the receiver he visits Chinatown again, and this time he asks for a woman.

Zhang’s is famous for its service, and they deliver. Campbell offers money without truly expecting to pay and isn’t surprised when Zhang insists. The girl they bring is tiny, barely sixteen. Despite her age, she’s professional and cool as she draws him to the bed. It’s big enough for three, with silken black tassels and embroidered cushions.

As the girl unbuttons the frogging on her jacket Campbell notices a shelf above the door. On the shelf sits a lacquered gold statue with a little black goatee and a tiny robe of patterned yellow cotton. The round black hat pasted on its head reminds Campbell very much of a flat cap. 

Campbell knows he shouldn’t be thinking of small things at such time, but he’s been a policeman for years. He notices the details. 

“What’s that?” he asks, and points.

The girl circles her breast with one hand. It takes her a second or two to realize that he’s looking over her shoulder. She follows his gaze and says something in Chinese which sounds to Campbell like _chrysanthemum_. He raises an eyebrow.

“_Chenghuangshen_,” she says, slowly.

“What’s that?”

“_Chenghuangshen_,” she repeats.

“In English?”

The girl’s brow furrows, and her lips pout in a way he suspects other men find attractive. “Boundary god?” Her English sounds a little more uncertain. “He lives in the city. Protects the people.”

He looks at the statue again. The hat’s definitely a flat cap. Their boundary god, whatever it is, wears a Peaky Blinder uniform.

Campbell shakes his head. “That thing can’t protect you.”

The girl nods unconvincingly and reaches out to unbutton Campbell’s undershirt.

“Are you listening?” he says harshly. “It’s not protection.”

The girl’s eyes widen as he takes her by the throat.

***

His visit is not a success. The girl leaves crying and obviously shaken, and Zhang informs Shelby of Campbell’s presence. He finds some pleasure in telling Shelby he has been betrayed, though the man clearly has no idea what he’s talking about. As Campbell leaves he reaches up and tilts the shelf. The Chinese god falls on the floor and smashes. Campbell grinds the fragments beneath his heel as he stalks out.

Afterwards, he writes a letter to Grace which stops just short of calling her a whore.

***

Campbell vows that Birmingham will drink the cup of the anger of the Lord. He writes to inform Billy Kimber of Thomas Shelby’s plan. Kimber’s Birmingham Boys can cull the Shelby family for him. Kimber thinks he’s tough, but the force can take him at their leisure, and peace will finally prevail in Birmingham.

Moss does as he’s told, though his round pudding face betrays his feelings. He gives Campbell a speech stuffed with duty and loyalty. He has the nerve to criticise Campbell himself, when Moss is rotten as the whole stinking lot of them. All the Birmingham coppers have been taking Peaky bribes for years.

The worst of it all is, Campbell knows Moss is right.

Campbell hasn’t cleaned up Birmingham. Birmingham has dirtied him. He entered the city a clean upstanding man and left it a whoremongering bent copper. But he’s damned if he will fall without taking down the man he deems responsible. Campbell can’t sow Birmingham with salt, but he _can_ bring Shelby to justice. And if it takes a thief to catch a thief he’ll be a better thief than the whole bloody lot of them.

Like all Campbell’s schemes, this plan doesn’t go quite as he expects. He’s forced to leave Shelby be, at least for now. Shelby has the city, but not Grace. As for Grace, she might have jilted Campbell, but she can’t keep the man she has chosen. Campbell keeps that knowledge close and treasures it. 

He goes to meet Grace at the station. Shelby isn’t coming. He sees that much in Grace’s slumped shoulders as he approaches her down the long platform. She’s abandoned her bright dresses, and her dark coat lends her the look of the city. Coal-dust smudges her cheeks, and her once-bright hair is dull. She looks exhausted as the train wreathes her in steam. The fumes coil round her and circle her legs. It’s as if the city is opening its stinking heart for her, as if Birmingham’s embracing her in a way it won’t welcome him.

Campbell swears to God he’s gone there with no ill intention, but the sight of her enrages him. He raises the gun. If he can’t have her, then neither will the city. His mind finds frantic ways to justify the murder even as he lifts the weapon.

Then the train whistle shrieks. Campbell hesitates for a second, and in that instant Grace raises her arm and shoots Campbell with the pistol he gave her. Something strikes him with great force and slams him back onto the platform. His own gun has vanished, and his hand misses the smooth curve of the grip. His mouth gapes as his fingers curl round empty air. The air reeks of blood. Perhaps that iron tang comes from the factories? Campbell can’t tell any more.

Darkness draws in around him. The train has gone, but he feels like he’s flying down a long dark tunnel. Just as the tunnel swallows him, he realises he’s going to die in Birmingham. It’s the final indignity in a month that has been full of them.

_Dear God_, he thinks, just as he passes out. _I hate this city._

_‘I wish I was in Carrickfergus,_

_Only for nights in Ballygrand,’_

-Irish traditional folksong

**Author's Note:**

> I’m from the East Midlands and this fic was mostly inspired by the setting. Birmingham’s not a pretty city, and it takes a lot of stick for its accent and its generally unprepossessing character. I genuinely love that the series’ creator set out to mythologize his hometown. I wanted to play with the idea of Tommy Shelby as Birmingham’s grubby genius loci and was delighted to learn that Chinese mythology has a similar concept of a deified town leader who watches over the city. Pedantry alert: Tommy doesn’t actually wear his cap during his second meeting with Campbell, but I liked the image. My intention was not to disrespect, and any mistakes are entirely my own.


End file.
